A famous Islamic cleric, Sheik Ahmad Gumi has descended heavily on the government in its fight against insecurity, saying that government is not ready to fight terrorism.

He said, “Look at the trillions of Naira that is being spent on security, whereas there is no security except the road blocks.”

The fiery Islamic preacher, who is the son of the late famous Sheik Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP WEEKEND, noted that “government seems not to be ready to fight terrorism in Nigeria.”

“Boko Haram is not an insurgency. They are not many; just few individuals here and there and their weapons are not explosives, and they don’t have tanks and so on. They are not an army; they are just like the Niger Delta militants.”

“The best they can get here is Kalashinkov, (AK47), so it is not an insurgency, it’s just a criminality. Still government politically can use it for their advantage and the opposition can use for its advantage; so there is political consideration to this Boko Haram.

“We have fanatics; among those boys who are anti-social in behaviour.

‘‘They can easily join anything that can cause commotion and trouble thinking it is religious because of their ignorance about religion,’’ he said.

He described that Boko Haram as a complex, interwoven social, religious and political disorder, saying that the social component of it was represented by criminals.

He explained that people are desperate to break away from poverty and remarked that, in Northern Nigeria, about 76 per cent of the people live below the poverty line.

The cleric further noted that the high rate of crime was a manifestation of the social-economic problem of the nation.

“These criminals go under the guise of Boko Haram to commit crimes. Why? So, that they cannot be traced. Any criminal, if he goes under the guise of Boko Haram, the police will be looking for the Boko Haram, they would not be looking for the criminals. So, this is the socio-economic factor of it,” he stated.

According to him, “We have seen government involved in massacre and killing people just for political reason to sustain power. So, whichever-way you look at it, the government is saying the opposition is behind Boko Haram trying to destabilize their government.

“The government too can be behind that political Boko Haram, in trying to castigate the opposition, to clamp down on them. Look at it now all the Northern cities like Kano, Sokoto, Maiduguri, Kaduna now are all under occupation: people are not free to move around, businesses are going down,” he added.